The International Organization of Standardization

               The International Organization of Standardization has subsidiaries in 162 countries around the world. The ISO believes that standards make a positive contribution to all aspects of life around the globe. Their goal is to ensure the quality of products in areas such as safety, reliability, efficiency, and environmental friendliness. The organization prides themself in being responsible for thousands of standards that positively benefit the world. The standards strive to make development as well as the manufacturing process and the supply and services process safer. They also have standards that work toward making international trade fairer. They provide governments with standard guidelines on safety, health and environmental legislation. Safeguarding consumers is also very important to the ISO. Their official mission states that ISO develops high quality voluntary International Standards which facilitate international exchange of goods and services, support sustainable and equitable economic growth, promote innovation and protect health, safety and the environment” (ISO Central Secretariat, p. 3, 2011).

               The ISO supplies several products on their guidelines to any customers that are interested. Products include informational material such as magazines, databases, handouts, packages and checklists. 55% of income is generated from their membership fees and the other 45% comes from the sale of publications (ISO Central Secretariat, p. 26, 2009). Their 2009 total revenue was 36,349,000 CHF but after expenditures and operating costs, the net result was 0. This is because the ISO only aims to earn enough revenue to meet direct organizational costs. In the ISO’s Strategic Plan 2011-2015, they laid out guidelines for increasing opportunities for “maintain(ing) the strong financial base of the organization” (ISO Central Secretariat, p.3, 2009) which is comprised of fixed, long term, current and liquid assets. The investments are necessary for the organizations long term sustainability as well as for meeting the operating expense cash requirements.

               Because ISO generates the majority of its capital from the development of standards, meeting standard requirements is key to the success of the organization. ISO maintains a consistent publishing amount year to year. Annual production charts would suggest that ISO’s product strategy is to be able to continue publishing at a consistent rate each year, even though they have already created so many. ISO’s distribution strategy has been evolving over the past several years. E-products, available to customers online, is one of the newer ways that products are offered to customers. Because the material comes in a downloadable PDF file, it can be sold at a lower cost. There are no longer material costs for ISO when customers purchase their products this way. It is almost 100% profits.  

               ISO’s global business environment is very good because there are many developing countries that are in desperate need of standards. Because they are one of the few organizations of their type, ISO has very little global competition. Their target market is governments and private sector businesses. “A key element of ISO’s customer focus strategy is communicating, informing and educating ISO’s current and future customers” (ISO Central Secretariat, p.23, 2009). They recently launched a communications package for customer’s top management. They host annual Marketing and Communication Forum’s. They also have developed the ISO Café which put everything customers would ever want to know about ISO in one convenient location.  They also send out e-Newsletters consistently.

               ISO’s impact on global culture is extremely positive. They spread knowledge, facilitate trade, disseminate vastly innovative advances in technology, and share successful management practices as well as conformity assessment practices. “ISO standards provide solutions and achieve benefits

for almost all sectors of activity, including agriculture, construction, mechanical engineering, manufacturing, distribution, transport, medical devices, information and communication technologies, the environment, energy, quality management, conformity assessment and services” (ISO Central Secretariat, p.2, 2009). They focus to improve global economic, environmental and societal quality.

               Management needs to focus more of the customer’s needs. The growth of an organization is based upon the organization having satisfied customers. Because the meaning of customer to ISO can be quite broad, the customer’s exact needs can be hard to define at times. If a company cannot anticipate customer needs they will never thrive.  ISO’s management needs to develop specific guidelines to help them better assist their customers.